Colin Firth, who received an Oscar nomination for his role in “A Single Man” last year, is now Oscar bait for his role as King George VI in “The King’s Speech.” (WireImage)
You could be forgiven for approaching Friday’s “The King’s Speech” and its mountain of Oscar hype with a raised eyebrow. Here, Colin Firth plays Britain’s King George VI, a reluctant monarch who’s laboring to overcome a speech impediment during the run-up to World War II. And if there’s one thing that’s become an awards-season cliché, it’s actors turning in showy performances about characters with disabilities. Play someone who’s blind, deaf, slow or mentally off, and you can go ahead and make room on your mantle.
Cliff Robertson in “Charly,” Jane Wyman in “Johnny Belinda,” Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” Jamie Foxx in “Ray,” Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump,” Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs,” Al Pacino in “The Scent of a Woman” — the list goes on.
So what’s the line between an extraordinary piece of acting and turning into Simple Jack, the parody in Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder”?
In a word: moderation.
“We were all a bit worried,” Firth admits to The Post. “You have a bunch of people saying that as soon as you play someone with a disability, then you get all this attention. Everyone gets rewarded for playing a disability.
“It’s not true. You can actually get it wrong and not get rewarded,” he continues. “So it was alarming.”
Firth says he and director Tom Hooper (of last year’s excellent “The Damned United”) were “quite vigilant” about the character’s stammer, figuring out what the real King George sounded like and then streamlining his impediment so that the dialogue would still flow and the audience wouldn’t get too frustrated.
“The potential pitfalls were endless,” Firth says.
Judging by early reviews, however, Firth has fallen into none of them. He’s tipped as a sure-thing Best Actor nominee, and the movie is certain to wind up on the list of 10 for Best Picture.
Geoffrey Rush, who plays Lionel Logue, an unconventional Australian speech therapist who works with King George, is also generating awards heat in the Best Supporting category, as is Helena Bonham Carter, who plays George’s wife and mother of the current queen, Elizabeth II.
In other words, expect to hear plenty more about “The King’s Speech” next February.
For Firth, it could mark the second straight year in which he snags a Best Actor nomination. He earned one last year for playing a depressed gay professor in Tom Ford’s “A Single Man,” though he ultimately lost to Jeff Bridges.
This year, Firth says he’s no more prepared to play the Oscar game.
“I didn’t learn anything [from last year],” he says. “People try to make a science out of these things, but you may as well try and make a science out of the craps table. Other veterans of the red carpet told me — because I was a complete virgin last year — that you never learn the ropes. Things just happen.”
“The King’s Speech” is set during the 1930s. King George V is dying, and next in line to the crown is his eldest son, Edward (Guy Pearce).
In 1936, Edward ascends to the throne, but later that year, in a scandalous move, abdicates in order to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. (Madonna is currently directing a movie about Simpson called “W.E.”)
Edward’s sudden abdication forces younger brother George VI to become king, a duty that will require — much to his consternation — frequent public speeches, including numerous radio addresses to his subjects.
To overcome his stammer, George hires Logue, visiting him daily in a ramshackle office and submitting to Logue’s gamut of breathing and speech exercises, including one in which George screams profanities.
It is this scene that has earned “The King’s Speech” a controversial R rating, a designation that did not sit well with Firth and Hooper.
“I can’t think of a single film I’ve ever seen where the swear words had haunted me forever, the way a scene of violence or torture has,” Hooper told the LA Times, “yet the ratings board only worries about the bad language.”
“I have small children, and I don’t want them to hear those words,” Firth says. “So I don’t think this is a nonissue. I really don’t.
“But I think it debunks those words,” he adds. “Funnily enough, I think the biggest weapon against bad language is to take away its power and trivialize it. [In the scene,] it’s used as a healing technique, it’s not used viciously or in a sexual context. More importantly, it’s not used casually.”
Firth says he would encourage younger people to see the film anyway.
“It’s exactly what we would wish for our kids: You don’t think you’re brave, you’ve written yourself off, what are the hidden strengths you didn’t know you had?” he says. “There’s a lot of inspirational stuff in there.”
The critics and Oscar prognosticators certainly have been inspired. Now how about audiences?
reed.tucker@nypost.com